


House of Hearts

by Asphyxiation (cat_in_my_hat)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst, Fighting, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Oikawa is a BAMF, Tobio agrees, based loosely off Ajin, experimental writing style, hinata is precious, i basically took the concept and fucked with it, like really loose, mentions of mental illnesses, non-graphic torture scenes, well i think they're non-graphic but i could be totally wrong
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-08
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-07 03:02:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6782686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cat_in_my_hat/pseuds/Asphyxiation
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Kageyama Tobio dies, he is smothered with a pillow to his mouth.</p>
<p>Or that one where Tobio gets killed a bunch of times and becomes a terrorist for it. Or a part of a "specialist removalist squad" because Hinata's sensitive like that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This has been bothering me for a long fraking time and I'm only posting this to keep my sanity raaaaahhhhhhgggggg  
> it shouldn't be too long a story (I hope oh God I hope) Works title from Slow burn by Culture Code Ft. Alexa Ayaz the more you know hahahahahaha *dies a little*  
> This is based off Ajin, but you do not need to know the Ajin universe to understand this - i basically take the concept of it and created this (whatever tf this is someone tell me pls) so its not really anything like Ajin and doesn't involve Ajin characters at all :))))))))  
> Just a warning/disclaimer about some of the things mentioned in this prologue: I know nothing of the details of post-natal depression and am only using the WORST CASE outcome of having it for plot. that being said, if you notice anyone being a little down in the dumps after having a baby help 'em out a little. (also it might be a little disturbing bc why would I be nice to little tobio hahahahahahaha)  
> ENJOY!!

The first time Kageyama Tobio dies, he is smothered with a pillow to his mouth. He can remember it vividly, in his dreams, the way his lungs burned and his head spun. He can recall the way his mother pants and the desperate way that he claws her tear-dampened face. The way his mother cries as she sits up from where she is straddling his dead body, and the way she quietly leaves him to resurrect in a quiet house.

He is only twelve, but he knows more than he should – about post-natal depression, and how his mother has never really been okay ever since his little brother was born (the little brother, he notices desperately, who is lifeless in the bed next to him) – from the conversations that are meant to be quiet talks between his parents. But Tobio is observant and introverted in ways that his father doesn’t really comprehend, so whispers in the house are loud in Tobio’s mind and he hears everything.

He doesn’t quite understand what is happening when he wakes up with his father’s distraught face in front of his;

“Tobio,” he gasps, “ _Oh god, Tobio you’re alive_.”

He’s hugged, tightly, and his father doesn’t let him go, not when they find his mother’s body hanging from the rafters of their attic, and not when they cover his little brother’s body up in a heartbreakingly small black bag. He doesn’t remember much from that night – nothing but flashing lights and hard-faced detectives who look at him with pity, and, in the recesses of his mind, burning lungs and a mother that killed him with tears in her eyes

The day after, he’s in an interrogation room, and the authorities are talking to him in soft tones and gentle voices.

“Did your mother ever hurt you?” one asks, sliding a cup of soft drink across the hard silver desk and Tobio grabs it with numb fingers. The detective is old – Tobio thinks is name is Washijo Tanji, but he isn’t sure – and reminds him of his grandfather who passed away two years ago and Tobio feels calm – safe, _treasured_ – because his eyes are wrinkled with laughter, and Tobio dears to speak out.

“I-I thought that she did to me what she did to Izumo,” he mumbles, head downcast to look at the drink in his hands.

The room goes silent and Tobio isn’t really sure why, so he glances up to see Washijo glaring at him with cold eyes, and he flinches back when the man spits out gruffly, “What do you mean by that, boy?”

He fidgets and looks at his father next to him, who looks at his son with a gaze full of concern, who nods for him to continue, “I – well, I think she tried to hurt me, k- _kill_ me. But it didn’t work because I woke up, right?”

Washijo’s eyes seem to glow, and Tobio almost flinches back from the older man.

The other officer, who had stayed quiet for the most part, speaks up, “Perhaps we should have some tests done to make sure he’s okay. Asphyxiation can lead to severe brain damage in some cases.”

His father takes him to the hospital, and, under the watchful eyes of the two officers, he stays there for two days while they conduct a number of tests – all of which come back clear. Washijo looks gleeful, in a menacing way and, as they talk to the doctors in a hushed voice outside his room, he can hear his Washijo sneering in snippets – “ _He obviously isn’t human_ ,” and “ _What do you mean there’s no proof? What psychotic parent kills one child and leaves the other completely unharmed_ ” and, “ _He definitely died in that room, which makes him-_ ”

 His tirade is cut off by one of the doctors, who speaks firmly, and loud enough for Tobio to hear her clearly, “There is only one way to test for an Ajin, and I most certainly am _not_ allowing you to kill a _twelve year old_ under the _slight_ possibility that he might be an Ajin. Now, if you would please excuse me, I have to go and tell Kageyama-san that his son is fine to go home.”

Tobio fiddles with his fingers nervously as he hears the door to his room open. He sits up in the stiff sheets, and expects to see his father standing there, but instead sees Washijo, whose partner is hissing at him from the doorway. Washijo ignores her, and grabs Tobio by the front of his hospital gown and pulls him close to the old man’s face.

 “I know what you are, _boy_. And when you stuff up, I’ll be the one to find you and stick a bullet in your skull,” he releases his grip violently and shoves Tobio back onto the lumpy mattress, and he watches as the old man stalks out of the room with his heart beating rapidly in his ears. 

His heart doesn't really slow until his father comes to get him; takes his hand and rubs circles into the skin there. His father fills out the paperwork for his release and it isn't until they're in the car and halfway home when his father speaks to him. 

"Tobio," he starts, "Please don't tell anyone about what your mother might have done to you."

Tobio wants to ask why, but he remembers the look on Washijo's face and thinks he might understand. So he nods his head, and the rest of the ride home is silent. 

They never speak of it again (Tobio's father never looks him in the eye, so similar to his mother's, again).


	2. Drag Me Through Hell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title of the chapter from bring the horizon's follow you bc why not :))))))))  
> Aussie spelling mate ;)

_Ajin are demi-humans that cannot die. Along with the ability to resurrect themselves, they have a scream that can paralyse all living creatures that hear it. There are currently forty-six Ajin in confirmed existence, but many believe that their numbers could reach into the thousands-_

Tobio locks his phone as the teacher waltzes past; turning his head back to the book he has resting on his knees. He waits until he’s out of sight before he pulls his phone out again, and looks at the words on his screen with clenched teeth and remembers vividly the hands that he used to claw at his mother’s face as she smothered him to death only four years prior. His palms itch, and Detective Washijo’s face comes to mind. He resists the urge to throw the phone, and instead closes the tab and breathes in deeply.

He’s known for a while that what happened with his mother isn’t normal – it isn’t a dream, because the memory of burning lungs and a fading consciousness is too real for a twelve-year-old to imagine up but he can’t really be-

The bell rings loudly, signalling the end of lunch, and Tobio jumps so violently that he cuts his finger on one of pages of the textbook on his knees. He swears at the twinge of pain, and shoves the appendage in his mouth as he trudges off to class. 

 _If_ he really is an Ajin – well, there’s only one way to prove it, and Tobio remembers the hand gun that his father keeps tucked away in a box beneath his bed. He knows of a few abandoned hikers trails that are few minutes’ walk from his house.

(Fleetingly, he thinks about what would happen if he’s _not_ an Ajin, but dismisses the thought because there’s not really much on this earth that he’ll miss anyway).

 --

The gun is a heavy weight in his backpack as he walks a sufficient distance away from the sounds of traffic at his back. He stops when the grass has almost completely grown over the pathway, and the only thing that he hears is the eerie silence of nature.

He pulls the gun out of his bag, and checks what he’s left in there – his phone with an erased history and a piece of paper with a half-assed suicide note written on it, and his gym clothes that he’d forgotten to take out earlier. With shaking hands – because he truly doesn’t believe he’ll wake up, somewhere deep down – he flicks the safety off.

Sucking in a deep breath, Tobio grabs the gun, aims it at his head and pulls the trigger before he can talk himself out of it.

There’s a moment of agony, his ears ringing – then it’s all gone, fading away into complete silence.

His eyes open with a snap and he lifts his hand to his head where the bullet entered and – he feels something sticky, but as soon as he touches it, it’s gone. When he looks at his shaking fingers, red with his own blood, he realises numbly that the paper cut on his finger is no longer there. _So resurrecting heals everything_ , he thinks blandly, barely concealing his hidden panic because – _no, I don’t want this, I’m human, I’m_ human _-_

He’s suddenly glad for the change of clothes his gym gear offers, because there’s blood all over his tattered sweat shirt and dripping off the side of his face. Trembling, mind quiet with shock, he manages barely to change his shirt and wipe his face clean with the dirty one. So wrapped up in his own terror of – _no no no no, I’m_ human – he misses the loud sound of snapping twigs and a phone being locked. (Instead he sits for a few minutes and calms his racing thoughts. Soon everything stops spinning in circles around him, and he’s okay, already accepting that being _Ajin_ doesn’t make him any less _human_ ).

On his trek home, his mind is rather quiet and he feels as though a weight has been lifted off of his chest – what happened with his mother was _definitely_ not a dream; he wasn’t crazy. His mother _did_ love him at some point, because the tears that she once cried over his lifeless body weren’t a lie.

(He tries not to think about the implications of being an Ajin. His life will constantly be plagued by the fact that if he ever gets caught – well, everyone has heard of, _seen_ the videos on YouTube, of the _experimentation_ that Ajin are put through. Tobio is caught remembering this one particular video that he found on a creepy website that had shown an Ajin being drawn-and-quartered before having their throat slit. Washijo’s malicious face appears in his mind, and he’s twelve years old, cornered in a hospital bed shaking. Tobio shivers.

 _They’ll never find me_ , he thinks, _I won’t let them_.)

The house is quiet when he gets home, and Tobio finds a letter from his father; _I’ll be at work until late, there’s frozen pizza in the freezer if you get hungry_. The letter is anything but unexpected – Tobio knows he looks like his mother, with his steel-blue eyes and resting bitch face, and his father is just avoiding him to avoid memories of _her_ , but it still doesn’t mean that he doesn’t miss his father.

He eats slowly, not really tasting the food, and does his homework at the counter. He spends the rest of his night researching Ajin, but none of it really expands on what he really knows – _immortal, paralytic scream, forty-six captured_.

It isn’t until much later when he’s tucked in bed and half asleep that his bedroom door is knocked down.

He jumps with a start, but doesn’t have much time to do anything because someone shoots him successively in the torso and he barely has time to look at Washijo’s gleeful face before his entire consciousness fades.

 --

He wakes to the rattling sound of a moving truck.

At first, he doesn’t really know what’s happening, but he remembers then, the face of Washijo as he is shot in his bedroom and – _How did he find out_?

He tries to move, but he’s buckled down at the wrists and ankles to a metal board. He struggles – _desperately_ because he _knows_ what happens to Ajin that are caught – and wants to scream. He can hear his heart beating in his chest and panic rises as bile in his throat and he pulls, and pulls but the bindings don’t give, will never give because Tobio is _trapped_ and he will never escape, doomed to live a life of pain – because while he _knows_ that he’ll live, the few deaths that he has gone through, _hurt_ and it’s the type of pain that drains him, mentally; it’s just not that easy to forget the feeling of a bullet moving through his skull or the air leaving his lungs and everything from the tips of his hair to the tops of his toes _burning_ in an agonizingly slow decent into nothingness. The thought of having this done to him on a daily basis is enough to make him fight, liberally, for freedom.

“There’s no use in fighting, Tobio-chan,” Says a voice to his left. The man sitting there has perfectly quaffed hair and matching brown eyes with a smile that is so sickly sweet it is almost poisonous, “You’re strapped in pretty tight there.” The man stands and tugs on the buckles strapped around his wrist as though to prove a point, “Let me introduce myself, Tobio-chan. I’m Oikawa Tooru, and I’m the man in charge of looking after you for the duration of your stay at the facility. While you’re here, you’ll undergo a series of.... _tests_ that will help us humans understand your species better.”

Oikawa straightens and cups the side of Tobio’s face with a gloved hand, “Your little stunt in the woods proved to be quite the blessing, Tobio-chan! If not for those concerned campers with a _very_ incriminating video we never would have met, and I just can’t think of anything crueller than depraving people of my beautiful face for longer than necessary.”

Tobio’s heart sinks - and he watches numbly as Oikawa pulls out a needle and pushes it into the skin of his wrist. The last thing he remembers before he passes out is the poisonous smile on Oikawa’s face and the teasing, “ _Let’s have some fun together, ne_?”

 --

He wakes next to someone cutting his arm off.

He screams; the sound muffled completely by the cloth over his mouth, and struggles against the bindings that hold him. The metallic taste of blood in his mouth is accompanied by its thick stench permeating the room. Next goes his right leg and he hurts so much that it doesn’t really hurt at all, just a spiking throb in his blood stream that won’t go away, and only gets worse as time goes on. After that he loses track – a toe, the tops of his ears, the skin off his stomach; it never ends.

He hears the three men cutting him up say things occasionally, “ _Heart rate picking up_ ,” and, “ _Pain receptor’s fluctuating rapidly, take off a toe_ ,” and other vague things that he doesn’t really care about, because he’s pretty sure that the only thing still attached to his body is his right arm to the elbow and his left leg with only two toes left – and then something is said and someone is forcing his eye open and digging it out with a crude tool that reminds him of an ice cream scoop.

He arches off the metal bench with a cry, and _feels_ something, not quiet him but a _part_ of him standing behind the guy currently holding his eye as though it was tennis ball. The connection between him and this _entity_ is strained, as though it was only a thread holding them together, and as soon as it’s there, the feeling, the _thing_ is gone, because he’s lying in a pool of his own blood and his consciousness is fading into the now-familiar abyss of death.

He doesn’t know how many times he dies that day, but he knew that it never really ended.

\--

Tobio doesn’t know how long he’s been in there for. His life consists entirely of being cold, in pain, or dead (he doesn’t know when death started being a release, when he began wishing he _stayed_ down rather than got back up, but it might have been around the time they cut his heart out and held it up in front of his face as he lay there and die).

When not in the torture room, they leave him in a body shelf that they use in morgues where he sometimes catches glimpse of the facility’s only other member, who had tufts of bright orange hair that stuck out of the bandages that he is wrapped head-to-toe in. His time in the shelf is the only time that he’s truly alone, and he uses it wisely.

It seems that Ajin are capable of more than immortality and a paralytic scream – Tobio knows this now, because the once foreign him-but-not-him feeling is familiar now. He knows without seeing it that outside of his shelf is a large, black _thing_ that stands a foot taller than most people. It’s skeletal shaped, with large claws and oval “head” to it. Its shape is formed by black matter that coils into smoke around it. Closing his eyes, he can see everything that it sees – an empty room with glass doors that open onto a clean corridor. A corridor that Tobio travels everyday to a tiny room stained with his and the red-head’s blood, (a place that he’ll be dreaming about for everyday of his supposedly immortal life).

Shaking his head of the thought, he commands his black ghost to move, and it obeys him, moving in the opposite direction of the torture room. He already knows that he can make about three ghosts a day and that they can touch physical matter, but not be seen. He thinks he has good enough control over them, aside from a few instances in which they have stopped responding to his commands. He doesn’t really care all that much, however, because he has more than half of the floor plan memorised and an escape route planned.

All he needs is the perfect opportunity.

He’s halfway through the employee lounge when he passes Oikawa Tooru, the only reason why he is ever given food to eat (even though it’s half-cold porridge) and a shower (although the entire experience consists of him tied at the wrists and blindfolded, with a sponge hurriedly scrubbed against the dried blood on his body). Despite their meeting, he is grateful to Oikawa, even though he’s a tad bit narcissistic and never shuts up about his boyfriend.

(He’s so wrapped up in his thoughts that he doesn’t notice Oikawa’s eyes as they trail after his black ghost’s slow walk).

 

\--

There’s a fire outside of his body shelf.

Tobio can feel the heat on his feet, and knows that _this_ is the opportunity he has been waiting for.

Summoning a black ghost, he gets it to reel him out of the body shelf – but he underestimates its strength because it _rips_ him from the wall and roughly pulls him from the metal tray on his back before dissipating in a cloud of black smoke. Hands free, he pulls the bindings from his eyes and mouth, revelling in the freedom to move his body for the first time in who knows how long. He’s nearly out of the door when he remembers the orange tufts of hair that belong to his partner Ajin and he turns back with a swear.

His lungs are ablaze from the fire, and he burns his hands on the metal of the draw as he pulls it open only to find the red-head out cold. _Drugs,_ he realises numbly. The other must have only just come back from his session, then.  

Tobio bites his lip and makes a snap decision – everything resets when an Ajin dies, meaning that they’ll wake up _drug free_ if they’re killed so Tobio summons another black ghost, has it free him and then break the boy’s neck. The body falls to the ground in a slump, but Tobio is quick to grab it and drag it out of the room. The building is seemingly abandoned; the fire alarm is painting the walls dark red in intervals and there was a blaring noise over head, but he barely pays any attention to it as the boy in his arms wakes up slowly, coughing at the smoke in the air. The fire eats at the glass door of the morgue-like room and Tobio sweats in the heat that approaches.  

Tobio grits his teeth, “Wake the fuck up, dumbass, or we’re gonna get caught again.”

The other boy jumps up, incredibly fast and leans into Tobio’s face, “I’m not a dumbass, dumbass!” He can’t see his face through the bandages, but something about the boy’s high-pitched voice grates on Tobio’s nerves. The small boyish body leans out of Tobio’s space as he looks around, “Uh? W-what happened? I’m free? I’m free!”

Tobio just grabs the boy by the scruff of his neck from where he is studying his hands and flexing them, “We won’t be for very long if we stand around here.”

The boy shrugs out of Tobio’s grip and runs ahead of him, “Why didn’t you just say so, _let’s go_.”

“ _That’s the wrong fucking way, dumbass_.”

They take off down the hallway and Tobio notices despairingly that this planned escape route is blocked by a wall of flames. The fire either spread incredibly quickly or _someone_ has lit it in various places on the floor. Biting his lip, Tobio thinks; they’re on the fifth floor of the building, seemingly kept on the side as far away from the roads as possible. They don’t keep any windows on this floor, either, which means they have to go down a floor – Tobio vaguely remembers passing barred windows when he is watching through his black ghost. (He tries not to think about how he only has one black ghost left, and if they pick the wrong window, they may just be falling straight into the authorities’ hands).

“C’mon,” he says to his companion, who startles at the unexpected noise, “There are windows on the next floor so we should be able to get out through one of those.”

“If you say so,” the other says dubiously, “What’s your name, anyway?”

“Kageyama Tobio,” he replies, “You?”

The boy just shrugs, “I don’t know.”

He’s about to ask  about it when they hear a crash – the roof above Tobio caves in and it’s only because of the smaller boy’s reflexes that he gets out alive. He’s pulled with a surprising amount of strength out from under the falling debris. Tobio looks at the place where he was nearly crushed with wide eyes that soon turn to the small body of his saviour who looks equally as off put as he does. They make eye contact and seem to unanimously decide to pick up the pace.

They make it halfway down the fire escape hatch when they run into the firemen – who are accompanied by guards armed with tranquilizer guns. Tobio swears even as the other flails in utter panic and they both run back up the stairs, but it isn’t quick enough because while the smaller is quick on his feet, Tobio isn’t; he’s hit on his ankle by a syringe filled with enough sedatives to knock out a grown elephant and he falls, tripping the smaller boy in the process.

“What are you – _gah!_ You _got hit_ ,” the boys hisses, and grabs him by the shoulders and starts pulling, dodging the fired shots as best he can.

“Just let me go, dumbass,” Tobio hisses, struggling to stay awake “As long as one of us gets out....it won’t have been....a failure....”

But the boy isn’t listening to him, but to something over his shoulder and Tobio hears the sounds of men falling distantly through the ringing in his ears. He has just enough time to shoot a glance over his shoulder before his consciousness fades. What he sees is Oikawa Tooru surrounded by the fallen bodies of firemen and guards alike, with a back ghost standing behind him and blood on the walls.

For the second time in his life, Tobio faints to the sight of Oikawa Tooru’s poisonous grin.

 --

When Tobio wakes up next, he’s in a comfortable bed and there’s sun in his eyes; for a moment, he thinks he’s dreaming. The slight in his eyes his harsh from where it shines in through pale curtains, and he shields his eyes with a hand.

He sits up slowly, taking in the quaint room – white walls, wooden floors, decorated with an assortment of China Dolls and frilly paraphernalia. There’s a bed next to him, and Tobio recognises the orange curls as belonging to the other Ajin boy (whose name he _still_ doesn’t know).

It doesn’t take him long to realise that this place (wherever it is) has to be related in some way to Oikawa; who he distinctly remembers in his last memory conscious. He’s curious, however, about the black ghost he clearly remembers accompanying Oikawa’s figure in the stairwell – it means one of two things; Oikawa is an Ajin or he knows someone who is. Tobio is more than willing to place his money on the former rather than the latter, but it doesn’t entirely make sense to Tobio, why he seemingly appeared to _help_ them. There is nothing but a lose-win scenario with Oikawa losing everything (his job, his livelihood, his _everything_ ) and Tobio and the other boy winning everything ( _freedom_ he realises, tasting the air around him, as though the cleanness of it is somehow different here than in a mouldy torture room).

He hears the distinct sounds of someone cooking something filter in through the open door, and the boy next to him wakes with a start, drool sticking to the side of his face, hair sticking up worse than it did usually.

“Waaa?” the boy asks when Tobio doesn’t stop staring at him. Tobio is somewhat transfixed with his appearance; small body, slightly tanned skin and big, round eyes that look gold in the light. (Somewhere, deep down he thinks, _beautiful_.)

“You have drool on your face,” is what Tobio replies with, and the boy squawks and wipes his face on his pyjamas, that look entirely brand new and two sizes too big for his prepubescent body. Tobio notes that his clothes are new, too, but fit much better than the other’s do. The noise alerts the other occupants in the house of their consciousness, and Tobio bites down in his panic, because he’s not yet sure what is happening, where they are, or what to do about it. The boy next to him is oblivious to the loud footsteps approaching them – or he just doesn’t care.

Tobio looks up at a white head pokes around the door, and takes in the kind brown eyes and mole near his eyes and thinks that he’s never seen someone so non-threatening in his life. He’s a little confused when the smaller boy’s disposition lightens up at the sight of the newcomer.

“Suga-san!” he cries, too loud and too happy for this time in the morning (not that Tobio knows what time it is, and the sun is a little _too_ bright to be anything but early afternoon, but something about the other really grinds on his nerves).

“Hello, you,” the man – _Suga_ – says, ruffling the other’s hair as though it really needs anymore messing up. He turns to Tobio, and bows slightly, “Hello, I’m Sugawara Koushi, but feel free to call me Suga.”

Tobio manages a slight tilt of the head, “I’m Kageyama Tobio,” he manages to mumble. He’s about to ask where he is, or get any kind of explanation as to what is actually going on, when Suga taps him on the forehead with a spatula.

“Lunch is going to be ready soon, so get your butts up and out of bed!” Suga says cheerily, leaving the two boys staring at his back, one with admiration and the other left in complete confusion.

The boy is up and out of his bed quickly, trailing after Suga with a series of quick footsteps but Tobio takes his time – the world outside of the sanctuary of the bedroom is a large hallway, decorated with the same random assortment of knick knacks as in the room he woke in. At the end of the hall there’s a kitchen, where he can hear the two others talking cheerily. He passes a staircase and a number of doors on his way, indicating the house is huge and very westernised in style and layout.

When he comes into the kitchen, Suga has already placed their meals on the breakfast bar. It’s only a small dish of rice and egg, but Tobio looks at it with an empty stomach. To him, it looks like a five course meal; and it seems his sentiment is shared. The other is already three-quarters of the way through his first bowl. 

His expression must give him away, because Suga laughs, “You can eat as much as you want. I have more for you if you want it.”

He does as he’s told – his questions can wait because this is his first warm meal in what feels like years. He and the other get through three whole bowls each before they both stop, much to the amusement of Suga, who laughs every time they request more. During the entire meal, Tobio is somewhat dumbfounded by the entire situation – the kindness, especially, of Sugawara who looks like an angel incarnate.

Tobio’s half way through his second bowl when he looks up and asks, “Why are you helping us?”

Suga just smiles amenably and replies, “When Tooru gets back, I’ll explain everything. Besides, us Ajin need to look out for each other.”

Tobio just nods his head like that explains everything (even though it really doesn’t) and that’s the last thing they say until the smaller boy flings a flyway piece of rice onto Tobio’s head and they bicker loudly – “ _You eat like an idiot,” Tobio snaps, shoving his chopsticks into the others cheek. “You eat the same way!” the other replies indignantly, flicking his chopsticks away with his own. “But at least_ I _don’t look like an idiot, dumbass!_ ” – until Suga flicks them both in the head and tells them with a pleasant smile to _stop squabbling_.

The front door opens and the unmistakable sound of Oikawa Tooru’s voice comes from down the hall, “ _Kou-chan_! I have returned to you!”

Tobio stiffens slightly as the man he associates with cold porridge and poisonous smiles enters the room wearing plain jeans and a heavy overcoat that looks _way_ too warm for this weather. There’s a man behind him, all tanned skin and large muscles, who nods his heads at the two Ajin before lugging a large duffle bag through the kitchen and its adjoining living area into another cut off room that Tobio can’t see into very well from the angle he’s sitting at.

Oikawa plants a kiss on Suga’s cheek and Tobio is reminded of all the times Oikawa would talk about his boyfriend while he was in captivity and puts two and two together (he doesn’t know how he didn’t realise it earlier – it’s not like Oikawa could know more than one person with an angelic smile and a mole underneath his eye). When he finally turns to the two of them, the red head next to him waves energetically, but Tobio stiffens.

“Ah, Chibi-chan, Tobio-chan, it’s so nice to see you outside of that damned facility!” he cries, draping an arm around the two of them. Tobio is distinctively uncomfortable with the entire affair, the foreign weight of his arm around his shoulder and the stiffness of his hair as it scratches against his cheek. (He’s a little off put, however, by the obvious strength he feels in the arm. Oikawa has _muscles_ and Tobio is more than a little out classed).

“Um – Oikawa-san,” Tobio says, pulling away from the awkward embrace, “What is happening? Where am I?”

Oikawa straightens up and pats Tobio’s head , like he’s said something cute, and says to Suga, “I believe we might be needing some coffee,  Kou-chan. It seems Tobio-chan has a lot of questions.”

Suga nods, “Can do. Would you two like anything?”

The other calls out, “ _Juice please_ ,” while Tobio mutters, “ _Just some milk_ ,” and they both go red when Oikawa says, “ _It’s like we’ve adopted two children, Kou-chan! What shall I do, I’m too young to be a mother!”_ (It’s at this point that the other man walks back in and hits Oikawa over the back of the head – _Shut up Shittykawa we have things to do_ ).

The new man and Tooru direct Tobio and the other Ajin back down the hallway and past the bedroom they woke in, to an open living area that has two lounges sitting directly opposite of each other.

“Take a seat. I have a lot to tell you,” Oikawa says, gesturing for them to take one seat while Oikawa and the new man take the other. When they’re all settled, Oikawa collapses his hands between his open knees and says, “To start this off, I just want to tell you,” he looks at the red head, “That your name is Hinata Shouyou and you have been in the care of the facility since you were twelve year old. You are now seventeen.”

Tobio watches as Hinata looks at his hands in wonder, and he’s more than a little confused, “Why wouldn’t you know your own name?”

Hinata just tilts his head and the look he gives Tobio is blank, and sends a shiver down his spine, “I don’t know. I just woke up one day and I was in the facility. I can’t remember anything before that,” he looks at Oikawa, “Why is that? What did they do to me? I thought that when I die everything goes back to normal.”

Oikawa just grimaces, “They cut your head off. Ajin heal so that the largest piece is the centre of healing – so when the head it removed, they grow a new one from the neck up. Well, they wanted to know if the same head took the other’s place, and if its brain functioned the same way as the old one,” His hands clench, “They don’t. You’re a completely new person. Hinata Shouyou died the minute they took his head off, and a new Hinata took his place. You took his place.”

Hinata looks, to Tobio, a bit like a deer caught in headlights, green around the face and totally unprepared for that news. For some odd reason, Tobio feels the need to hold the other, to tuck him under his arm as though that would do anything to protect him from the outside world. He squashes the feeling as soon as it comes and turns to Oikawa.

“Why were you with them if you knew what they did to-to _us_. You’re Ajin too, aren’t you?” Tobio spits, hands clenched on his knees, inexplicably enraged at the memories of Oikawa just _sitting_ _there_ and watching them disembowel him time and time again – and Hinata, so small, so fragile, having his _head cut off_? “Why did you wait so long?”

Oikawa recoils from the venom in his voice, “I had to wait for the right time. The only reason why I was at the stupid facility in the first place was because I was intending to get Hinata out. I know I didn’t get there in time – don’t you think that I don’t know that?” he cries, “And besides, if I hadn’t have waited, we probably wouldn’t have been able to save _you_ , so stop acting like I didn’t try. Because I did.”

Tobio bits his lip, and looks at Hinata again, who looks on the verge of vomiting or crying or doing something stupid, but he just closes his eyes and breathes – in and out, three times before saying, “Thank you Oikawa-san. I’m sure the other Hinata would understand,” he looks up and smiles, brilliant, “I mean, we both had the same body, so we can’t have been that different. And if I’m grateful, I’m sure he’d be grateful too.”

Oikawa’s shoulder’s sag, and gives him a weak smile and it hits Tobio that he’s never seen Oikawa looks so serious before – not when he was scrubbing a particularly large clump of blood of Tobio’s chest with a dirty sponge and even dirtier water, not even when he was spoon feeding him half-frozen food out of a metal bowl with a small spoon – and the mature expression doesn’t sit right on his handsome face.

The other man coughs in the suddenly silence, drawing attention to him, “With all of that out of the way, it’s time we moved onto the other shit.”

Oikawa just pouts, and whines, “Iwa-chan, you just _can’t_ ruin the mood like that,” he turns to them and stage-whispers, “Sorry about Iwa-chan here, he’s a brute that doesn’t understand the sensitivity of the soul – _gah!_ ”

Oikawa gets hit over the head unrepentantly and the man says, “My name is Iwaizumi not _Iwa_ - _chan_ , get it right,” he clears his throat again (probably to cover up Oikawa whinging) and begins, “About the ‘ _who, what, where, how?’_ of everything, you’re in a villa a few miles away from the Utsukushigahara highlands, about three hours from Tokyo. You’re completely safe here – we’ve been using this place as a hideout for years. Hinata already knows this but we drove you here yesterday morning after Oikawa set fire to the entire facility.”

Tobio nods, and Suga walks in with a tray and places it on the coffee table between them. He takes a seat next to Hinata, and pats him on the head as though he knows that Hinata had just been handed some unsavoury news.

“The plan was a weird one indeed,” says Suga, taking a cup off the tray and taking a sip, “We had Oikawa infiltrate as a human because he has the best control over his black ghost,” Suga laughs, “I can barely summon one, and even then it fizzes out quickly.”

Tobio wants to ask about that, too, but thinks it can wait because something Iwaizumi said catches his attention, “You said ‘we’ who is the we?”

Oikawa’s smile turns razor sharp, “The Ajin Rights Movement. An assortment of Ajin and humans who are.... _invested_ in the living conditions of Ajin in custody,” he says proudly, as though Tobio knows _exactly_ what he’s talking about.

Iwaizumi sighs at the description, “We free captured Ajin from government control. As you two experienced firsthand, they’re not nice. We have people spread out across the globe, hijacking Ajin labs in the first world. You guys aren’t the only two freed so far. Currently, thirty-eight of the forty-six in captivity are now free Ajin.”

Oikawa nods, “Yeah, and we’re so _good_ that governments have kept our entire existence a secret.”

Tobio is speechless, and Hinata is awed, because he lets out a completely _star-struck_ sound, “That’s _so cool_.”

Oikawa preens under his statement, “I know, I’m definitely cool,” he says, but Iwaizumi hits him again and he whines.

Tobio nods his head, thinking everything through, “So you guys are part of a huge organised movement made to free all Ajin? And you’ve got less than ten people left to free?”

“It’s not as simple as that. There are eight left in captivity that are _reported_. In the third world there are hundreds-if not _thousands_ of Ajin being used as soldiers in civil conflicts, as unwilling organ donors and as lab rats kept in worse conditions than you two were,” says Suga, “We’re invested in their welfare as well.”

Tobio swallows, “That’s a huge problem – do you guys even have the numbers to accomplish that?”

Oikawa sighs, “You doubt us, Tobio. We have quite a few, but this is where we ask you guys one simple question. I just want to preface this by saying that we aren’t looking for an answer right now – you have a few days to answer. But, we need more people and we want to offer you two the opportunity to travel the world with us, freeing Ajin.”

“Of course it’s going to be dangerous – we’ll be training you in combat and stuff before we leave, if you say yes, that is,” Suga says, patting Hinata on the head again. “That being said, we could be captured at any moment and you guys could be put in the exact same situation as you just got out of, but we want to extend the opportunity anyway.”

Tobio goes silent and thinks about his mother – the talks that she had with his father about how she wasn’t okay, and how he brushed her off, time and time again and how his brother is in a grave because of that decision. The decision his father made that involved ignoring his mother as she cried for help and how she cried as she strangled him to death, how she knew it wasn’t right and how _Tobio_ now knows isn’t right. He doesn’t want to be like his father, so guilt stricken by his own choices that it made it hard to hold a conversation with his only son. He remembers the years of neglect, of sitting in a silent house with the knowledge that if only he were old enough, _smart_ enough, that his mother might still be alive.

He thinks about the feeling of someone pulling his eye out and holding it above him like it wasn’t a valuable piece of his body, about the feeling of someone cutting him open like he wasn’t even a living thing and pulling out his organs and having people watch as he bleeds to death. He thinks about how he’ll never be able to sleep without nightmares and about Hinata getting his head chopped off ( _he’s not even the same person_ ) and he knows. He knows exactly what he’s going to do.

He looks at Hinata then, who seems to have gone through the same thought process as him and they both say, simultaneously, “ _I want to help_.”

Iwaizumi just laughs, a low, harsh sound and Oikawa seems a little dumbfounded. But it’s Suga who turns to them and says, “Welcome aboard.”


End file.
